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Monday, May 16, 2011

First Spider Blog

"Don't forget to clean up the body parts, or it'll attract others.""I'm not going to clean it up. I want the others to come check it out, so I'm leaving its 8-eyed head on a spike. As a a warning."

Have I mentioned our free-loading roommates?

The sketchy ones with weird eyes who don't pay rent, show up unexpectedly, and spend most of their time in the bathroom?

Anyone guess spiders? Fuck yeah, spiders!

more like, eeeeuuughhhhhhh spiderrrrrrs.. /fetal position

Since I'm distracting myself from actual writing work, allow me introduce them, via the Spider Inventory, (which I've also been building in order to distract myself). {forgive my camera quality. No excuses, it just sucks--if you couldn't tell by now}

First, Creeper Garage Spider

yeah, that's one of his eyes, glinting with evil.

This dude hangs out inside the garage near our entrance door. Most of the time he's peeking out from behind a shelf or something, but the other day he was out in the middle of the wall, being all "HEY WHATS UP IM A BIG SPIDER AND I LOOK KINDA FURRY."

But yeah, while he's the biggest in size (and therefore, the most worrisome), I've looked it up, and I'm like 99.99% sure he isn't a brown recluse. And he doesn't really bother us, so we haven't evicted him yet. And it'll stay that way as long as he doesn't appear in our apartment.

He's just a creeper.Champion Spider

Champion Spider is a really small, really round spider (not a black widow) who lives under the china closet we keep our dishes in. He's been there since I moved in, and even though we've moved the cabinet 3 time since, he's never relocated. We figured he's a badass, and since he was tucked away, we let him alone.

BUT THEN. We noticed that he was trapping larger spiders in his web. Like, spiders twice and three times his size. I'm pretty much too scared to evict him.

He's a champion.

Immortal Sink Spider

ANOTHER GLINTY EYE!

AGHHHHSHHFHFHHH

This one is the most troublesome. He hides out in the bottom of the bathroom trash can, in the bathroom sink, the shower, and most commonly, in the kitchen sink:

GOOOOOOOD MORNING!

We had a week straight where we woke up to one or two of these in the kitchen sink. Seeing a spider that's sometimes the size of a quarter just chillin' in the sink is something that I'll never. ever. get used to. And pulling the trash bag out of the trash and having a spider the size of a dime drop off and on to my bare foot is DEFINITELY something I'll never. ever. want to get used to.

And you can't just wash them down the sink. Why? Because they crawl back, angry. I SWEAR TO GOD.

But, with the help of Shelby (Addie's sister/owner of the house) spraying for bugs outside around basement and the windows; and if we keep absolutely no dishes in the sink, the spiders rarely show up.

Except one was crawling across the bed this morning... eeeeuggghhhhh.

Big Ass Pipe Spider

View one, blurry

view 2, still blurry

Now this one... was the first super omnious spider I've encountered here (except for the dead black widow on the sidewalk downtown). I mean, look at it. It's small, but bulbous, kinda spotty, a little Tim Burton-y, and had this crazy web attached to an exposed pipe under our bathroom sink. He was tucked away, and catching Sink Spiders, so once again, I let him go.

Buuuuut, concern got the better of both of us--well, concern and a few drinks and some liberal tossing of the phrase "possible egg sack", and we decided to evict it. And by we, I mean, I made Addie do it.

disarming the spider with a handful of paper towels

further disarming of the spider, a la Jewish glass breaking ceremony

Since we weren't sure the 17 paper towels we used to apprehend the spider would flush, I stuffed it in an old Ben and Jerry's ice cream tub, and then into a used ziplock bag. I figure if the spider was strong enough to survive 2 crushings, suffocation, and eating its way through 34 layers of paper towel, waxy paper carton, and high intensity plastic bag, I'd give it the apartment.

spider bomb: highly effective.

By the way, Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream is the best ice cream in the world; quickly usurping Ben and Jerry's Half Baked as the best ice cream in the entire world.

So now that I'm thoroughly distracted by spider research (have you ever googled "house spider"? it'll lead you down a rabbit-hole of terrifying articles and images that I just... can't... look away from), it's time to get back to writing in proper.